Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover]
Denry the Audacious
By
Arnold Bennett
Author of "Clayhanger"
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
31 West Twenty-Third Street
THE DEEDS OF DENRY THE AUDACIOUS
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY
DENRY THE AUDACIOUS
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY
E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. The Dance
II. The Widow Hullins's House
III. The Pantechnicon
IV. Wrecking of a Life
V. The Mercantile Marine
VI. His Burglary
VII. The Rescuer of Dames
VIII. Raising a Wigwam
IX. The Great Newspaper War
X. His Infamy
XI. In the Alps
XII. The Supreme Honour
Denry the Audacious
CHAPTER I. THE DANCE
II
Edward Henry Machin first saw the smoke on the 27th May, 1867, in
Brougham Street, Bursley, the most ancient of the Five Towns. Brougham
Street runs down from St. Luke's Square straight into the Shropshire
Union Canal, and consists partly of buildings known as "potbanks" (until
they come to be sold by auction, when auctioneers describe them as
"extensive earthenware manufactories") and partly of cottages whose
highest rent is four-and-six a week. In such surroundings was an
extraordinary man born. He was the only anxiety of a widowed mother,
who gained her livelihood and his by making up "ladies' own materials"
in ladies' own houses. Mrs. Machin, however, had a specialty apart from
her vocation; she could wash flannel with less shrinking than any other
woman in the district, and she could wash fine lace without ruining it;
thus often she came to sew and remained to wash. A somewhat gloomy
woman; thin, with a tongue! But I liked her. She saved a certain
amount of time every day by addressing her son as Denry instead of
Edward Henry.
Not intellectual, not industrious, Denry would have maintained the
average dignity of labour on a potbank had he not at the age of twelve
won a scholarship from the Board School to the Endowed School. He owed
his triumph to audacity rather than learning, and to chance rather than
design. On the second day of the examination he happened to arrive in
the examination room ten minutes too soon for the afternoon sitting. He
wandered about the place exercising his curiosity, and reached the
master's desk. On the desk was a tabulated form with names of
candidates and the number of marks achieved by each in each subject of
the previous day. He had done badly in Geography, and saw seven marks
against his name in the geographical column, out of a possible thirty.
The figures had been written in pencil. The very pencil lay on the
desk. He picked it up, glanced at the door and at the rows of empty
desks, and wrote a neat "2" in front of the 7; then he strolled
innocently forth and came back late. His trick ought to have been found
out--the odds were against him--but it was not found out. Of course it
was dishonest. Yes, but I will not agree that Denry was uncommonly
vicious. Every schoolboy is dishonest, by the adult standard. If I
knew an honest schoolboy I would begin to count my silver spoons as he
grew up. All is fair between schoolboys and schoolmasters.
This dazzling feat seemed to influence not only Denry's career but also
his character. He gradually came to believe that he had won the
scholarship by genuine merit, and that he was a remarkable boy and
destined to great ends. His new companions, whose mothers employed
Denry's mother, also believed that he was a remarkable boy; but they did
not forget, in their cheerful gentlemanly way, to call him
"washer-woman." Happily Denry did not mind. He had a thick skin, and
fair hair and bright eyes and broad shoulders, and the jolly gaiety of
his disposition developed daily. He did not shine at the school; he
failed to fulfil the rosy promise of the scholarship; but he was not
stupider than the majority; and his opinion of himself, having once
risen, remained at "set fair." It was inconceivable that he should work
in clay with his hands.
When he was sixteen his mother, by operations on a yard and a half of
Brussels point lace, put Mrs. Emery under an obligation. Mrs. Emery was
the sister of Mr. Duncalf. Mr. Duncalf was the Town Clerk of Bursley,
and a solicitor. It is well known that all bureaucracies are
honeycombed with intrigue. Denry Machin left school to be clerk to Mr.
Duncalf, on the condition that within a year he should be able to write
shorthand at the rate of a hundred and fifty words a minute. In those
days mediocre and incorrect shorthand was not a drug in the market. He
complied (more or less, and decidedly less than more) with the
condition. And for several years he really thought that he had nothing
further to hope for. Then he met the Countess.
II
The Countess of Chell was born of poor but picturesque parents, and she
could put her finger on her great-grandfather's grandfather. Her mother
gained her livelihood and her daughter's by allowing herself to be seen
a great deal with humbler but richer people's daughters. The Countess
was brought up to matrimony. She was aimed and timed to hit a given
mark at a given moment. She succeeded. She married the Earl of Chell.
She also married about twenty thousand acres in England, about a fifth
of Scotland, a house in Picadilly, seven country seats (including
Sneyd), a steam-yacht, and five hundred thousand pounds' worth of shares
in the Midland Railway. She was young and pretty. She had travelled in
China and written a book about China. She sang at charity concerts and
acted in private theatricals. She sketched from nature. She was one of
the great hostesses of London. And she had not the slightest tendency
to stoutness. All this did not satisfy her. She was ambitious! She
wanted to be taken seriously. She wanted to enter into the life of the
people. She saw in the quarter of a million souls that constitute the
Five Towns a unique means to her end, an unrivalled toy. And she
determined to be identified with all that was most serious in the social
progress of the Five Towns. Hence some fifteen thousand pounds were
spent in refurbishing Sneyd Hall, which lies on the edge of the Five
Towns, and the Earl and Countess passed four months of the year there.
Hence the Earl, a mild, retiring man, when invited by the Town Council
to be the ornamental Mayor of Bursley, accepted the invitation. Hence
the Mayor and Mayoress gave an immense afternoon reception, to
practically the entire roll of burgesses. And hence, a little later, the
Mayoress let it be known that she meant to give a municipal ball. The
news of the ball thrilled Bursley more than anything had thrilled
Bursley since the signing of Magna Charta. Nevertheless municipal balls
had been offered by previous mayoresses. One can only suppose that in
Bursley there remains a peculiar respect for land, railway stock,
steam-yachts, and great-grandfather's grandfathers.
Now everybody of account had been asked to the reception. But everybody
could not be asked to the ball, because not more than two hundred people
could dance in the Town Hall. There were nearly thirty-five thousand
inhabitants in Bursley, of whom quite two thousand "counted," even
though they did not dance.
III
Three weeks and three days before the ball, Denry Machin was seated one
Monday alone in Mr. Duncalf's private offices in Duck Square (where he
carried on his practice as a solicitor) when in stepped a tall and
pretty young woman dressed very smartly but soberly in dark green. On
the desk in front of Denry were several wide sheets of "abstract" paper,
concealed by a copy of that morning's _Athletic News_. Before Denry
could even think of reversing the positions of the abstract paper and
the _Athletic News_, the young woman said, "Good morning," in a very
friendly style. She had a shrill voice and an efficient smile.
"Good morning, Madam," said Denry.
"Mr. Duncalf in?" asked the young woman.
(Why should Denry have slipped off his stool? It is utterly against
etiquette for solicitors' clerks to slip off their stools while
answering enquiries.)
"No, Madam; he 's across at the Town Hall," said Denry.
The young lady shook her head playfully, with a faint smile.
"I 've just been there," she said. "They said he was here."
"I daresay I could find him, Madam--if you would----"
She now smiled broadly. "Conservative Club, I suppose?" she said, with
an air deliciously confidential.
He too smiled.
"Oh, no," she said, after a little pause, "just tell him I 've called."
"Certainly, Madam. Nothing I can do?"
She was already turning away, but she turned back and scrutinised his
face, as Denry thought, roguishly.
"You might just give him this list," she said, taking a paper from her
satchel and spreading it. She had come to the desk; their elbows
touched. "He is n't to take any notice of the crossings-out in red
ink--you understand. Of course I 'm relying on him for the other lists,
and I expect all the invitations to be out on Wednesday. Good morning."
She was gone. He sprang to the grimy window. Outside, in the snow,
were a brougham, twin horses, twin men in yellow, and a little crowd of
youngsters and oldsters. She flashed across the footpath, and vanished;
the door of the carriage banged, one of the twins in yellow leaped up to
his brother, and the whole affair dashed dangerously away. The face of
the leaping twin was familiar to Denry. The man had indeed once
inhabited Brougham Street, being known to the street as Jock, and his
mother had for long years been a friend of Mrs. Machin's.
It was the first time Denry had seen the Countess, save at a distance.
Assuredly she was finer even than her photographs. Entirely different
from what one would have expected! So easy to talk to! (Yet what had
he said to her? Nothing--and everything.)
He nodded his head, and murmured, "No mistake about that lot!" Meaning,
presumably, that all that one had read about the brilliance of the
aristocracy was true, and more than true.
"She's the finest woman that ever came into this town," he murmured.
The truth was that she surpassed his dreams of womanhood. At two
o'clock she had been a name to him. At five minutes past two he was in
love with her. He felt profoundly thankful that, for a church
tea-meeting that evening, he happened to be wearing his best clothes.
It was while looking at her list of invitations to the ball that he
first conceived the fantastic scheme of attending the ball himself. Mr.
Duncalf was, fussily and deferentially, managing the machinery of the
ball for the Countess. He had prepared a little list of his own, of
people who ought to be invited. Several aldermen had been requested to
do the same. There were thus about a dozen lists to be combined into
one. Denry did the combining. Nothing was easier than to insert the
name of E. H. Machin inconspicuously towards the centre of the list!
Nothing was easier than to lose the original lists, inadvertently, so
that if a question arose as to any particular name the responsibility
for it could not be ascertained without enquiries too delicate to be
made. On Wednesday Denry received a lovely Bristol board stating in
copper plate that the Countess desired the pleasure of his company at
the ball; and on Thursday his name was ticked off on the list as one who
had accepted.
IV
He had never been to a dance. He had no dress-suit, and no notion of
dancing.
He was a strange inconsequent mixture of courage and timidity. You and
I are consistent in character; we are either one thing or the other; but
Denry Machin had no consistency.
For three days he hesitated, and then, secretly trembling, he slipped
into Sillitoe's the young tailor who had recently set up and who was
gathering together the _jeunesse doree_ of the town.
"I want a dress-suit," he said.
Sillitoe, who knew that Denry only earned eighteen shilling a week,
replied with only superficial politeness that a dress-suit was out of
the question; he had already taken more orders than he could execute
without killing himself. The whole town had uprisen as one man and
demanded a dress-suit.
"So you 're going to the ball, are you?" said Sillitoe, trying to
condescend, but in fact slightly impressed.
"Yes," said Denry, "are you?"
Sillitoe started and then shook his head. "No time for balls," said he.
"I can get you an invitation, if you like," said Denry, glancing at the
door precisely as he had glanced at the door before adding 2 to 7.
"Oh!" Sillitoe cocked his ears. He was not a native of the town, and
had no alderman to protect his legitimate interests.
To cut a shameful story short, in a week Denry was being tried on.
Sillitoe allowed him two years' credit.
The prospect of the ball gave an immense impetus to the study of the art
of dancing in Bursley, and so put quite a nice sum of money into the
pocket of Miss Earp, a young mistress in that art. She was the daughter
of a furniture dealer with a passion for the bankruptcy court. Miss
Earp's evening classes were attended by Denry, but none of his money
went into her pocket. She was compensated by an expression of the
Countess's desire for the pleasure of her company at the ball.
The Countess had aroused Denry's interest in women as a sex. Ruth Earp
quickened the interest. She was plain, but she was only twenty-four,
and very graceful on her feet. Denry had one or two strictly private
lessons from her in reversing. She said to him one evening, when he was
practising reversing and they were entwined in the attitude prescribed
by the latest fashion: "Never mind me! Think about yourself. It's the
same in dancing as it is in life--the woman's duty is to adapt herself
to the man." He did think about himself. He was thinking about himself
in the middle of the night, and about her too. There had been something
in her tone ... her eye...! At the final lesson he enquired if she
would give him the first waltz at the ball. She paused, then said yes.
V
On the evening of the ball, Denry spent at least two hours in the
operation which was necessary before he could give the Countess the
pleasure of his company. This operation took place in his minute
bedroom at the back of the cottage in Brougham Street, and it was of a
complex nature. Three weeks ago he had innocently thought that you had
only to order a dress-suit and there you were! He now knew that a
dress-suit is merely the beginning of anxiety. Shirt! Collar! Tie!
Studs! Cuff-links! Gloves! Handkerchief! (He was very glad to learn
authoritatively from Sillitoe that handkerchiefs were no longer worn in
the waistcoat opening, and that men who so wore them were barbarians and
the truth was not in them. Thus, an everyday handkerchief would do.)
Boots!... Boots were the rock on which he had struck. Sillitoe, in
addition to being a tailor, was a hosier, but by some flaw in the scheme
of the universe hosiers do not sell boots. Except boots Denry could get
all he needed on credit; boots he could not get on credit, and he could
not pay cash for them. Eventually he decided that his church boots must
be dazzled up to the level of this great secular occasion. The pity was
that he forgot--not that he was of a forgetful disposition in great
matters; he was simply over-excited--he forgot to dazzle them up until
after he had fairly put his collar on and his necktie in a bow. It is
imprudent to touch blacking in a dress-shirt. So Denry had to undo the
past and begin again. This hurried him. He was not afraid of being
late for the first waltz with Miss Ruth Earp, but he was afraid of not
being out of the house before his mother returned. Mrs. Machin had been
making up a lady's own materials all day, naturally--the day being what
it was! If she had had twelve hands instead of two, she might have made
up the own materials of half a dozen ladies instead of one, and earned
twenty-four shillings instead of four. Denry did not want his mother to
see him ere he departed. He had lavished an enormous amount of brains
and energy to the end of displaying himself in this refined and novel
attire to the gaze of two hundred persons, and yet his secret wish was
to deprive his mother of the beautiful spectacle!
However, she slipped in, with her bag and her seamy fingers and her
rather sardonic expression, at the very moment when Denry was putting on
his overcoat in the kitchen (there being insufficient room in the
passage). He did what he could to hide his shirt-front (though she knew
all about it) and failed.
"Bless us!" she exclaimed briefly, going to the fire to warm her hands.
A harmless remark. But her tone seemed to strip bare the vanity of
human greatness.
"I 'm in a hurry," said Denry importantly, as if he was going forth to
sign a treaty involving the welfare of nations.
"Well," said she, "happen ye are, Denry. But the kitchen table's no
place for boot-brushes."
He had one piece of luck. It froze. Therefore, no anxiety about the
condition of boots!
VI
The Countess was late; some trouble with a horse. Happily the Earl had
been in Bursley all day and had dressed at the Conservative Club; and
his lordship had ordered that the programme of dances should be begun.
Denry learned this as soon as he emerged, effulgent, from the
gentlemen's cloak-room into the broad red-carpeted corridor which runs
from end to end of the ground-floor of the Town Hall. Many important
townspeople were chatting in the corridor--the innumerable Sweetnam
family, the Stanways, the great Etches, the Fearnses, Mrs. Clayton
Vernon, the Suttons, including Beatrice Sutton. Of course everybody
knew him for Duncalf's shorthand clerk and the son of the incomparable
flannel-washer; but universal white kid gloves constitute a democracy,
and Sillitoe could put more style into a suit than any other tailor in
the Five Towns.
"How do?" the eldest of the Sweetnam boys nodded carelessly.
"How do, Sweetnam?" said Denry with equal carelessness.
The thing was accomplished! That greeting was like a masonic
initiation, and henceforward he was the peer of no matter whom. At
first he had thought that four hundred eyes would be fastened on him,
their glance saying: "This youth is wearing a dress-suit for the first
time, and it is not paid for, either." But it was not so. And the
reason was that the entire population of the Town Hall was heartily
engaged in pretending that never in its life had it been seen after
seven o'clock of a night apart from a dress-suit. Denry observed with
joy that, while numerous middle-aged and awkward men wore red or white
silk handkerchiefs in their waistcoats, such people as Charles Fearns,
the Sweetnams, and Harold Etches did not. He was, then, in the shyness
of his handkerchief, on the side of the angels.
He passed up the double staircase (decorated with white or pale frocks
of unparalleled richness) and so into the grand hall. A scarlet
orchestra was on the platform, and many people strolled about the floor
in attitudes of expectation. The walls were festooned with flowers. The
thrill of being magnificent seized him, and he was drenched in a vast
desire to be truly magnificent himself. He dreamt of magnificence,
boot-brushes kept sticking out of this dream like black mud out of snow.
In his reverie he looked about for Ruth Earp, but she was invisible.
Then he went down-stairs again, idly; gorgeously feigning that he spent
six evenings a week in ascending and descending monumental staircases,
appropriately clad. He was determined to be as sublime as any one.
There was a stir in the corridor, and the sublimest consented to be
excited.
The Countess was announced to be imminent. Everybody was grouped round
the main portal, careless of temperatures. Six times was the Countess
announced to be imminent before she actually appeared, expanding from
the narrow gloom of her black carriage like a magic vision. Aldermen
received her, and they did not do it with any excess of gracefulness.
They seemed afraid of her, as though she was recovering from influenza
and they feared to catch it. She had precisely the same high voice, and
precisely the same efficient smile as she had employed to Denry, and
these instruments worked marvels on Aldermen; they were as melting as
salt on snow. The Countess disappeared up-stairs in a cloud of shrill
apologies and trailing Aldermen. She seemed to have greeted everybody
except Denry. Somehow he was relieved that she had not drawn attention
to him. He lingered, hesitating, and then he saw a being in a long
yellow overcoat, with a bit of peacock's feather at the summit of a
shiny high hat. This being held a lady's fur mantle. Their eyes met.
Denry had to decide instantly. He decided.
"Hello, Jock!" he said.
"Hello, Denry!" said the other, pleased.
"What's been happening?" Denry enquired, friendly.
Then Jock told him about the antics of one of the Countess's horses.
He went up-stairs again, and met Ruth Earp coming down. She was
glorious in white. Except that nothing glittered in her hair, she looked
the very equal of the Countess, at a little distance, plain though her
features were.
"What about that waltz?" Denry began, informally.
"That waltz is nearly over," said Ruth Earp, with chilliness. "I
suppose you 've been staring at her ladyship with all the other men."
"I 'm awfully sorry," he said. "I did n't know the waltz was----"
"Well, why did n't you look at your programme?"
"Have n't got one," he said naively.
He had omitted to take a programme. Ninny! Barbarian!
"Better get one," she said, cuttingly, somewhat in her role of dancing
mistress.
"Can't we finish the waltz?" he suggested, crestfallen.
"No!" she said, and continued her solitary way downwards.
She was hurt. He tried to think of something to say that was equal to
the situation, and equal to the style of his suit. But he could not.
In a moment he heard her, below him, greeting some male acquaintance in
the most effusive way.
Yet, if Denry had not committed a wicked crime for her, she could never
have come to the dance at all!
He got a programme, and with terror gripping his heart he asked sundry
young and middle-aged women whom he knew by sight and by name for a
dance. (Ruth had taught him how to ask.) Not one of them had a dance
left. Several looked at him as much as to say: "You must be a goose to
suppose that my programme is not filled up in the twinkling of my eye!"
Then he joined a group of despisers of dancing near the main door.
Harold Etches was there, the wealthiest manufacturer of his years
(barely twenty-four) in the Five Towns. Also Sillitoe, cause of another
of Denry's wicked crimes. The group was taciturn, critical, and very
doggish.
The group observed that the Countess was not dancing. The Earl was
dancing (need it be said with Mrs. Jos. Curtenly, second wife of the
Deputy Mayor?), but the Countess stood resolutely smiling, surrounded by
Aldermen. Possibly she was getting her breath; possibly nobody had had
the pluck to ask her. Anyhow she seemed to be stranded there, on a
beach of Aldermen. Very wisely she had brought with her no members of a
house-party from Sneyd Hall. Members of a house-party, at a municipal
ball, invariably operate as a bar between greatness and democracy; and
the Countess desired to participate in the life of the people.
"Why don't some of those johnnies ask her?" Denry burst out. He had
hitherto said nothing in the group, and he felt that he must be a man
with the rest of them.
"Well, _you_ go and do it. It's a free country," said Sillitoe.
"So I would, for two pins!" said Denry.
Harold Etches glanced at him, apparently resentful of his presence
there. Harold Etches was determined to put the extinguisher on _him_.
"I 'll bet you a fiver you don't," said Etches, scornfully.
"I 'll take you," said Denry very quickly, and very quickly walked off.
VII
"She can't eat me. She can't eat me!"
This was what he said to himself as he crossed the floor. People seemed
to make a lane for him, divining his incredible intention. If he had
not started at once, if his legs had not started of themselves, he would
never have started; and, not being in command of a fiver, he would
afterwards have cut a preposterous figure in the group. But started he
was, like a piece of clockwork that could not be stopped! In the grand
crisis of his life something not himself, something more powerful than
himself, jumped up in him and forced him to do things. Now for the first
time he seemed to understand what had occurred within him in previous
crises.
In a second--so it appeared--he had reached the Countess. Just behind
her was his employer, Mr. Duncalf, whom Denry had not previously noticed
there. Denry regretted this, for he had never mentioned to Mr. Duncalf
that he was coming to the ball, and he feared Mr. Duncalf.
"Could I have this dance with you?" he demanded bluntly, but smiling and
showing his teeth.
No ceremonial title! No mention of "pleasure" or "honour." Not a trace
of the formula in which Ruth Earp had instructed him! He forgot all
such trivialities.
("I've won that fiver, Mr. Harold Etches," he said to himself.)
The mouths of Aldermen inadvertently opened. Mr. Duncalf blenched.
"It's nearly over, is n't it?" said the Countess, still efficiently
smiling. She did not recognise Denry. In that suit he might have been
a Foreign Office attache.
"Oh! that does n't matter, I 'm sure!" said Denry.
She yielded, and he took the paradisiacal creature in his arms. It was
her business that evening to be universally and inclusively polite. She
could not have begun with a refusal. A refusal might have dried up all
other invitations whatsoever. Besides, she saw that the Aldermen wanted
a lead. Besides, she was young, though a Countess, and adored dancing.
Thus they waltzed together, while the flower of Bursley's chivalry gazed
in enchantment. The Countess's fan, depending from her arm, dangled
against Denry's suit in a rather confusing fashion which withdrew his
attention from his feet. He laid hold of it gingerly between two
unemployed fingers. After that he managed fairly well. Once they came
perilously near the Earl and his partner; nothing else. And then the
dance ended, exactly when Denry had begun to savour the astounding
spectacle of himself enclasping the Countess.
The Countess had soon perceived that he was the merest boy.
"You waltz quite nicely!" she said, like an aunt, but with more than an
aunt's smile.
"Do I?" he beamed. Then something compelled him to say: "Do you know,
it's the first time I 've ever waltzed in my life, except in a lesson,
you know?"
"Really!" she murmured. "You pick things up easily, I suppose?"
"Yes," he said. "Do you?"
Either the question or the tone sent the Countess off into carillons of
amusement. Everybody could see that Denry had made the Countess laugh
tremendously. It was on this note that the waltz finished. She was
still laughing when he bowed to her (as taught by Ruth Earp). He could
not comprehend why she had so laughed, save on the supposition that he
was more humorous than he had suspected. Anyhow he laughed too, and
they parted laughing. He remembered that he had made a marked effect
(though not one of laughter) on the tailor by quickly returning the
question, "Are you?" And his unpremeditated stroke with the Countess
was similar. When he had got ten yards on his way towards Harold Etches
and a fiver he felt something in his hand. The Countess's fan was
sticking between his fingers. It had unhooked itself from her chain.
He furtively pocketed it.
VIII
"Just the same as dancing with any other woman!"--he told this untruth
in reply to a question from Sillitoe. It was the least he could do.
And any other young man in his place would have said as much or as
little.
"What was she laughing at?" somebody else asked.
"Ah!" said Denry judiciously, "wouldn't you like to know?"
"Here you are!" said Etches, with an unattentive, plutocratic gesture
handing over a five-pound note. He was one of those men who never
venture out of sight of a bank without a banknote in their
pockets--"because you never know what may turn up."
Denry accepted the note with a silent nod. In some directions he was
gifted with astounding insight. And he could read in the faces of the
haughty males surrounding him that in the space of a few minutes he had
risen from nonentity into renown. He had become a great man. He did not
at once realise how great, how renowned. But he saw enough in those
eyes to cause his heart to glow, and to rouse in his brain those
ambitious dreams which stirred him upon occasion. He left the group; he
had need of motion, and also of that mental privacy which one may enjoy
while strolling about on a crowded floor, in the midst of a considerable
noise. He noticed that the Countess was now dancing with an Alderman,
and that the Alderman, by an oversight inexcusable in an Alderman, was
not wearing gloves. It was he, Denry, who had broken the ice so that
the Aldermen might plunge into the water! He first had danced with the
Countess, and had rendered her up to the Alderman with delicious gaiety
upon her countenance. By instinct he knew Bursley, and he knew that he
would be talked of. He knew that, for a time at any rate, he would
displace even Jos. Curtenly, that almost professional "card" and amuser
of burgesses, in the popular imagination. It would not be: "Have ye
heard Jos.'s latest?" It would be: "Have ye heard about young Machin,
Duncalf's clerk?"
Then he met Ruth Earp, strolling in the opposite direction with a young
girl, one of her pupils, of whom all he knew was that her name was
Nellie, and that this was her first ball: a childish little thing with a
wistful face. He could not decide whether to look at Ruth or to avoid
her glance. She settled the point by smiling at him in a manner that
could not be ignored.
"Are you going to make it up to me for that waltz you missed?" said Ruth
Earp. She pretended to be vexed and stern, but he knew that she was
not. "Or is your programme full?" she added.
"I should like to," he said simply.
"But perhaps you don't care to dance with us poor ordinary people, now
you 've danced with the _Countess_!" she said, with a certain lofty and
bitter pride.
He perceived that his tone had lacked eagerness.
"Don't talk like that," he said, as if hurt.
"Well," she said, "you can have the supper dance."
He took her programme to write on it.
"Why!" he said, "there's a name down here for the supper dance.
'Herbert' it looks like."
"Oh!" she replied carelessly, "that's nothing. Cross it out."
So he crossed Herbert out.
"Why don't you ask Nellie here for a dance," said Ruth Earp.
And Nellie blushed. He gathered that the possible honour of dancing
with the supremely great man had surpassed Nellie's modest expectations.
"Can I have the next one?" he said.
"Oh, yes!" Nellie timidly whispered.
"It's a polka, and you are n't very good at polking, you know," Ruth
warned him. "Still, Nellie will pull you through."
Nellie laughed, in silver. The naive child thought that Ruth was trying
to joke at Denry's expense. Her very manifest joy and pride in being
seen with the unique Mr. Machin, in being the next after the Countess to
dance with him, made another mirror in which Denry could discern the
reflection of his vast importance.
At the supper, which was worthy of the hospitable traditions of the
Chell family (though served standing-up in the police-court), he learnt
all the gossip of the dance from Ruth Earp; amongst other things that
more than one young man had asked the Countess for a dance, and had been
refused, though Ruth Earp for her part declined to believe that Aldermen
and Councillors had utterly absorbed the Countess's programme. Ruth
hinted that the Countess was keeping a second dance open for him, Denry.
When she asked him squarely if he meant to request another from the
Countess, he said, No, positively. He knew when to let well alone, a
knowledge which is more precious than a knowledge of geography. The
supper was the summit of Denry's triumph. The best people spoke to him
without being introduced. And lovely creatures mysteriously and
intoxicatingly discovered that programmes which had been crammed two
hours before were not after all quite, quite full.
"Do tell us what the Countess was laughing at?" This question was shot
at him at least thirty times. He always said he would not tell. And one
girl who had danced with Mr. Stanway, who had danced with the Countess,
said that Mr. Stanway had said that the Countess would not tell, either.
Proof, here, that he was being extensively talked about!
Toward the end of the festivity the rumour floated abroad that the
Countess had lost her fan. The rumour reached Denry, who maintained a
culpable silence. But when all was over, and the Countess was
departing, he rushed down after her, and in a dramatic fashion which
demonstrated his genius for the effective, he caught her exactly as she
was getting into her carriage.
"I 've just picked it up," he said, pushing through the crowd of
worshippers.
"Oh! thank you so much!" she said. And the Earl also thanked Denry.
And then the Countess, leaning from the carriage, said with archness in
her efficient smile: "You do pick things up easily, don't you?"
And both Denry and the Countess laughed without restraint, and the
pillars of Bursley society were mystified.
Denry winked at Jock as the horses pawed away. And Jock winked back.
The envied of all, Denry walked home, thinking violently. At a stroke
he had become possessed of more than he could earn from Duncalf in a
month. The faces of the Countess, of Ruth Earp, and of the timid Nellie
mingled in exquisite hallucinations before his tired eyes. He was
inexpressibly happy. Trouble, however, awaited him.